We all point our fingers towards external factors when a financial crisis happens in our lives. We’d like to think that we had nothing to do with it but if you think about it, we are partly to blame. Although something as grand as an economic crash is beyond your control, implementing the right habits and being wise with your money is all it really takes.
There may be situations that will affect you one way or the other but you will realize that you can actually prepare for them. Things, like building up your emergency funds and diversifying your income sources, are quite effective in making you financially secure. You may still be affected by a job loss or an expensive yet necessary medical treatment but your personal finances will not have to suffer too much if you keep it secure.
One of the best ways to start securing your personal finances is to make sure that you have full control over it. Although you earn the money and you spend it, if you do not know where every penny goes – then you are not controlling it.
That is not a complicated concept to grasp but a lot of consumers fail at financial management because they think that it is difficult to do. Well, it is only difficult if you do not know what you are doing. But there are ways to simplify personal finance management and there are tools that you can use to make sure that everything will be done efficiently.
Here are 5 tips that we have to help you simplify your personal finances and make it easier for you to stay on top of all your financial transactions.
2 online tools that you can use to manage your money
Lucky for you, our technologically advanced society went out of its way to make financial management very easy. A lot of the suggestions that we have for you here will not be possible if it weren’t for the programs and tools created in the recent years. If you tried to simplify money management a few decades ago, it would have been very difficult to do so.
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Know the applications that you can use. As we mentioned, our technologically advanced society has provided a lot of tools and applications that you can use to manage your personal finances. You have the likes of Mint.com that provide free applications that will help you monitor your bills, make payments on time and oversee the transactions that you make every month. You can find an application that will sync all the financial related details that will enable you to make wise decisions about your money.
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Find the online calculators that suit your specific goal setting requirements. Some people get scared of financial management because of all the computations that they have to make. While it can admittedly be confusing, you don’t have to worry about them because there are specific calculators that you can use online. If you want to check how long it will take for you to finish paying off your credit cards, there is a calculator for that. If you want to determine how much money you should put aside for retirement, there is a specific calculator for that. You can find a calculator for just about anything online.
3 ways to keep financial management simple
Apart from what you can do over the Internet, you can also simplify your personal finances by keeping your transactions limited and convenient. There are options to make this possible and here are three things that you can do.
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Limit the banks you transact it. Some people find it difficult to manage their money simply because it is scattered all over the place. If you want to secure your money by putting it in two different banks, that is probably fine but remember that the more banks you transact with, the more monitoring you will have to do. Banks may have the same purpose but they have different rules, interest rates, finance charges, etc. Most banks have various financial products anyway so what the other offers may be something that you can get from your existing bank.
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Opt for automatic payments. The great thing about having most of your accounts under one bank is it makes it easier to transfer funds or make payments. You can use your different accounts to give support against overdrafts, etc. You can enroll in their online banking and just do your payments over the Internet. You can set up automatic payments so you don’t have to worry about late penalties. You don’t have to go through the tedious process of writing checks and mailing them in time for the due date. This makes your transactions paperless – which is a great way for you to actually help the environment.
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Set up automatic savings. While you are at it, why not make automatic savings too? Set up your account so that it takes away a portion of your income on a monthly basis. That will simplify your saving efforts and will also ensure that no matter what, you will be steadily contributing to your savings. It may even be a pleasant surprise to see how much you have actually deducted from your money.
The key to simplifying your personal finances is to be in the know. You will get a lot of information off the Internet by reading through top financial websites that have proven themselves to be an authority in this industry. Subscribe to their feeds so you can get updates via email. There may be programs and tools being developed that you can use in the future. Make sure you can utilize them as soon as they become available.